Whipped Cream Difficulties

Two Austin legal stories from the past couple of days that I wanted to cover:

1) A former employee of the Austin Public Library has been charged with stealing $1.3 million from the library.

Now, I’m sure you’re asking yourself: “How do you steal that much money from a library?” Answer: according to the indictment, he was purchasing printer toner with a city issued credit card and reselling it online.

“The library’s poor practices and procedures provided an opportunity for Whited to steal from the city during his tenure, leading to waste and overspending by the department,” according to the report. “Whited took advantage of poor purchasing reviews by his supervisors, former Financial Manager Victoria Rieger and Contract Management Specialist Monica McClure. Whited also took advantage of several other purchasing and budget-related shortcomings, such as having a role in the approval of his own purchases and insufficient oversight of the Library’s budget by Rieger and Assistant Director Dana McBee.”
As an accounting associate, Whited was responsible for making and approving purchases, cash receipts, billing, and other accounting transactions, the report states.

Bonus: this wasn’t his first go-around at the rodeo, but somehow the library put him in charge of all that stuff.

2) Strippers. Always with the strippers. A group of them are suing some of our finer local “gentleman’s clubs” (specifically, The Yellow Rose, Perfect 10 and Palazio, if you know Austin strip clubs).

The basis for the lawsuit is kind of unsurprising: the strippers claim that they were improperly categorized as “independent contractors” rather than employees.

The women signed documents agreeing to be independent contractors rather than employees, records show. However, Ellzey said the clubs treated them like employees — requiring them to work a certain shift, setting prices for dances and charging the women late fees if they did not arrive on time.
Under labor laws, that makes them employees, Ellzey said.
“The law looks to the conduct of the club … not the documents cooked up by the clubs,” Ellzey said. “The documents have no real legal significance.”

The responses from the clubs are about what you’d expect: the strippers wanted it that way.

Yellow Rose’s management also said that it’s in the dancers’ best interest to work as independent contractors.
“All Yellow Rose employees make at least minimum wage and generally far more than that,” the club said in a statement. “This case involves three — we have no clue who the fourth person in this lawsuit is — entertainers who knowingly and willingly worked as independent contractors, all of whom made a great deal more money than what they would have made had they been minimum wage employees. They now claim they were/are ‘actually’ employees and are due compensation directly from the Yellow Rose. We disagree.”

…

Bishop said the independent contractor agreements gave performers the opportunity to avoid turning over their tips to the club. However, Ellzey said that, despite this, the club often required the performers to divide their tips among other employees, such as the DJ, the security guard and management.
“The performers are typically younger,” Ellzey said. “They go to work in these clubs, and the money they’re making on stage is sometimes really surprising. I think when an older club owner or a manager with apparent authority says, ‘This is what you have to do. This is what everyone does. You need to split your tips, you need to pay house fees,’ then a younger, more vulnerable dancer is just going to believe them.”

This is also another “not the first go-around at the rodeo” affair: there was a previous settlement in another lawsuit filed against four clubs in Houston.

I’m no employment lawyer, but: if they control your schedule, set prices, and charge “late fees”, that kind of sounds to me like the strippers may have a case.